Google’s Chrome browser, which accounts for only a very small percentage of all user activity at present, is getting an upgrade. As of the new Beta 4 release, Google is touting a 30% speed increase overall in the browser’s performance. They’re also adding a raft of new features, including bookmark sync, which should help attract more attention to the product.

The sync feature is probably the most interesting one (as others have noted) in this new release. It’s a welcome idea, but it does come with some caveats. According to the announcement, “sync requires that all the machines being kept in step run the Chrome beta, and that the user has a Google account, such as a Gmail username and password. The browser syncs bookmarks using Google Docs, the company’s Web-based application suite.”

Basically, it sounds as if they’re storing a copy of the bookmarks file somewhere in your Google Docs account, where you can access it from any machine on the Internet. I suspect that you probably have to enter your Google account information into the browser’s sync settings (I’m guessing here) and it automatically checks the file revision when you connect. This makes a lot of sense, since some type of central repository has to exist in order to sync the bookmarks file. And of course, you probably can’t sync if Google Docs is down or you can’t connect to it for some reason (e.g. a firewall or other port restriction).

What’s also interesting is that Chrome is interested in improving JavaScript performance. It’s touting “Chrome 4.0’s faster JavaScript rendering speeds” — which also makes sense, since JavaScript is behind Ajax and other Web 2.0 features. I find it amusing that the JavaScript, which was only a toy half a decade ago and seemed to be vanishing in the face of .NET, PHP, and other languages, is rapidly becoming the glue that holds all these cool new features together. Ah, the more things change the more they stay the same.

Today several colleagues started talking about something I had, until the conversation started, taken for granted: the stability of the Firefox browser. It seems that some people are experiencing frequent crashes, hangs, and other annoying behaviors. Several have taken the radical (and undesirable) step of removing the application completely, migrating to another product like Chrome or Safari.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, don’t think it means IE is better. The same people said they disliked Microsoft’s product as “too clunky,” “too slow,” or just plain annoying. I don’t know which version they were referring to, but since most of the discussion was from science writers I doubt they were using some ancient and unsupported version. These folks tend to be pretty current with their technology.

The whole discussion made me curious, since I (and many others) use Firefox daily with absolutely no problem whatsoever. Many suggestions were made in terms of possible diagnostics or causes, so it only seems reasonable to pass them along. After all, if a few writers are experiencing browser problems it seems likely others are as well.

First, many users suggested specific websites might be more problematic than others. One noted that (of all things) scientificamerican.com relied on lots of heavy mouse-over advertisements and odd popups that could cause browser problems. The solution (if you’re using Firefox) is to install the wonderful AdBlock plugin, which should disable most, if not all ads found on these websites. Installing any ad blocker might help, but this seems to be one of the best. Plus, it’ll save bandwidth by preventing the download of all that cruft.

Second, a plugin like NoScript (also Firefox only) could easily cause slow page loading in some cases. This is because whole sections of a site might be blocked by the NoScript application; if these are somehow critical to the page, bad things might happen. This said, NoScript is a very handy application that can easily save your PC from infection by a bogus website. So don’t disable it unless you’re really certain a given site is safe.

Next, it’s possible that cruft (junk) from older installations is causing Firefox crashes. One user said they’d totally cured their browser-crash problem by completely uninstalling and re-installing Firefox 3.5.3.

All in all, Firefox is a great browser. But like any piece of software, it can run badly in certain contexts. Outside applications, not to mention viruses or other malware, could affect its stability. If you’re having browser problems, try to isolate the type of crash you’re having (i.e. is it caused by a certain website or action). Hunt around the net for help. Ask a friend. Make sure it’s not badly outdated or no longer supported. Try removing and re-installing it.

If nothing else works, try another browser. If that also crashes, you have much bigger problems to worry about.

Redmond has taken its share of legal lumps over the last few years, especially in terms of the $2.5 billion it paid to settle EU (European Union) antitrust complaints. These were related to IE and its tight integration into the Windows OS, of course (if you didn’t know that already, where have you been?). Now it looks like another chapter in this legal battle is about to close, as it prepares to settle another aspect of the same case.

An interesting article released recently suggests that Microsoft’s latest version of Internet Explorer, IE8, is your best defense against current security threats that infest the Internet.

Indeed, I like IE8 overall. It’s a whole heck of a lot better than earlier releases, but not because it’s more secure. Instead, I like it because it brings IE closer to actual conformance with W3C standards. This makes software development easier, lessens the need for browser-specific code, and should help developers deliver better solutions to their customers.

But what bothers me about these testing results is that “Microsoft paid for the tests.” I always doubt the results of testing performed at the behest of a specific vendor, unless that vendor agrees in advance that it will not review or modify the results, will accept them without question, and so forth. I don’t know if Microsoft agreed to such conditions or not.

Even if they didn’t, the results appear to be pretty good in terms of security. “Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 were the most consistent in the high level of protection they offered” against phishing attacks. This is known as the “average phishing URL catch rate,” and IE8 was successful 83% of the time. Firefox caught 80%.

What’s sad is that, in the same test, testing showed “Opera 10 beta at 54%, followed by Chrome 2 at 26% and Safari 4 at 2 %.” If these results are accurate, it means that Chrome and Safari have a long way to go.

What’s even worse, of course, is that developers now have to spend so much time even trying to catch and block all these threats in the first place. What we really need is for law enforcement to catch up to the 21st century, and start throwing spammers and phishing-scheme artists into jail for very long periods of time.

Or better yet, users could keep their systems updated and stop clicking on emails that infect their systems with botnet software (yeah, as if that will ever happen).

I knew a new release of Firefox was due on the virtual shelves sometime soon, but it came as a shock today when I ran across an announcement for version 3.5’s impending release. This is really good news, and initial reviews indicate it’s a worthwhile upgrade for several reasons.

First, there’s performance. The current claim is that 3.5 is “eight times faster at JavaScript performance than Firefox 3.0.” That’s critical, since JavaScript is the core of AJAX and other Web 2.0 features. The faster it runs, the better. Then there’s “integrated support for Ogg Theora video.” More internal support for various video formats translates to less need for external viewers, and a lower hassle factor when visiting various websites.

Many of the other new features are security related. One of the coolest is private browsing, which is already available in Chrome. Some may consider it a hassle because all cookies and other private data are discarded when you close a session, but that’s the price you pay for better privacy management. It’s also easier to leave your house, car, and desk unlocked…but it’s a whole lot less secure, too. This is also a bonus if you’re using Firefox on a public machine, since it (probably) means you don’t need to flush the cache and other data before logging off.

You can also tell 3.5 to “forget” any particular site on its history list. Very handy if you’ve a need to visit a site once and don’t want it showing up in the history list for weeks afterward…or if you’re banking from a work PC and don’t want your boss to see the visited URL.

Maybe the least useful new feature is the “location finder” that can, sometimes at least, pinpoint your location using your PC’s IP address and any nearby WiFi networks. It’s an interesting toy, but it can be inaccurate (one user reported that Firefox’s estimate of his location was off by 1000 miles) and is a possible security issue.

In all, Firefox 3.5 looks like a nice new release. Anything that boasts better performance and security is all right by me, especially if it’s a free product and Open Source. I’ll be downloading my copy soon.

One of the problems with today’s Internet is that a great deal of it is based on protocols that may not be “optimal” in terms of performance due to age or design. TCP/IP, for instance, is 30 years old and was designed for networks that were very different from those we have today. HTML has been around for about a decade and a half (in practical terms), and has been extended numerous times to deal with changing requirements.

Google has actually proposed ways of speeding up the Internet, which include review and possible replacement of several protocols. All this is certainly a good idea, along with making pipes fatter all over the planet to handle the inevitable increases in load.

This said, we could have a lot more available bandwidth today if application developers just thought about the amount of bandwidth their programs require. For example, the spreading adoption of specific Web 2.0 techniques is (albeit slowly) helping performance in one way while degrading it in another. Things like AJAX help by eliminating the need to refresh whole pages during certain form update operations. But they can also hurt if, for example, another call is made from the browser to the server every time someone types another character in a text field.

Things will, obviously, improve over time. But entrenched applications will change slowly. For example, HTML 4 has been around a decade while standards groups debate what to really do next. Finally the logjam is probably going to break with the issuance of version 5. But “HTML 5 features have shown up in browsers, but it could take years to fully implement.”

So don’t expect a new Internet revolution soon. But you can, as usual, expect things to change.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) came out a month or so ago. I haven’t heard much about it since, and now I suspect this may be due to the fact that it, unlike previous versions of IE, is actually standards-based. This is a departure for Microsoft, and it may actually cause problems in terms of acceptance.
Here’s why.

IE6, which was the de-facto standard browser across much of the world a few years ago, adhered to Microsoft’s “private” version of various Web implementations. Developers had two choices: either use hacks to make their applications browser-agnostic, or abandon every other browser and write solely to the IE “standard.” Many businesses appear to have chosen the latter course for their in-house applications…which means they’re not upgrading to IE8 just yet. In fact, I’m hearing that many are simply not upgrading at all and have suppressed distribution of anything above IE6 pending upgrades to their corporate suites.

Plus, Microsoft is now getting ready to distribute an IE-free version of Windows in the EU. This means people can pick and choose any browser they want, since one won’t be bundled with the OS by default.

This presents an opportunity for Firefox and other browsers, which have been gaining traction in the marketplace anyway over the last few years. They’re actually ahead of the game in many respects, and Microsoft is still playing catch-up. While IE still has some advantages in terms of easy provisioning and distribution within an enterprise, other players are offering tempting tools for the enterprise. Witness: “with the release of Firefox 3.5, due at the end of the month, Mozilla will offer tools for Web developers who want to recreate corporate applications using standards common to the modern Web — standards that Microsoft only began supporting in earnest with IE7.”

Now that companies will have to upgrade their applications to handle standards-based IE8, they’re free to look at any browser they want. Whatever they write will render identically on IE8, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or Safari…so it’s no longer a simple choice. As “companies think about migrating those older applications and their mandated browser from IE6, they might choose a competitive browser instead of upgrading to a newer version of IE.”

Are IE’s days as the one and only browser of world domination numbered? We’ll see.

For years Microsoft has been trying like mad to get its foot in the “search engine” door. On every occasion, it’s been dissed and ignored as irrelevant. This is similar to its attempts to enter the ISP market, in fact…MSN has been around a long time, but has never been all that relevant. Windows Live went nowhere, and has been shelved. Attempts to buy Yahoo’s business were rebuffed by stockholders and board members.

Now, Redmond is banking on its new “Bing” search engine to revitalize its efforts to gain traction in the marketplace. While it looks like a promising new technology, it’s unlikely to unseat Google or even make a significant dent in its business. One reviewer has already done an in-depth dive into the new product and came out with mixed reviews.

One interesting aspect of Bing is its “Explorer Pane,” which is supposed to provide categories that will help users narrow results. This is not a bad idea (the corporate search engine product I work on has a similar refinement panel) but there are two problems. First, this pane takes up screen real estate and a lot of it. Second, it seems biased toward (surprise!) Microsoft results. The reviewer said “in my initial tests, Quick Tabs often steered me to Microsoft services such as Bing Shopping, Bing Travel, MSN Autos, and Bing health information.” It’s always suspicious when a search result gives higher weighting to offerings made by the search provider.

The rest of the product is similar in tone. It’s innovative in a way, but annoying and clunky at the same time. In other words it sounds like a typical Microsoft product. Bing is trying to be all things to all users, and appears to fall all over itself while trying to accomplish that impossible task. All those whiz-bang features are sure to please…a few people here and there. In general, though, search is supposed to get the user to their intended destination in as few clicks as possible with little annoyance or interference. From the sound of things, Bing doesn’t really do that. It works, but it’s probably not attracting a large audience anytime soon.

Try again, guys. How about making Bing fast, accurate, non-intrusive, and unbiased? Right now, it reminds me of that viral video poking fun at what Microsoft would do if it was re-designing the iPod.

For years software development companies have prophesied the advent of totally web-based applications that will remove the need for local installation, storage, and so forth. Software as a Service (SaaS) is part of that model, and various companies (like Google) have experimented with it. In some respects, it makes sense. Why have users buy hundreds of dollars worth of software they’ll use only rarely? Why chew up gigs of disk space for huge applications that could be run directly across the Internet from central servers? On the other hand, is this model stable and scalable enough for widespread adoption?

One of the problems is that these snazzy new applications are too complex for the current release of HTML, which is at version 4 and has been for some years. In the early days of the web, HTML versions changed pretty rapidly; 2.0 came out in 1995, was succeeded by 3.2 in 1997/98, then quickly surpassed by 4.0 (in reality 4.01) around the turn of the millennium. HTML 5’s working draft just came out in 2008, and many hurdles have yet to be overcome before it really becomes a usable standard.

What all this means is that no one is going to produce huge web-based applications based on the HTML 4 language. For one, it would be technically difficult if not impossible to do so due to limitations in the current version. For another, it makes almost zero sense to write new code against an ancient standard like 4.01. So the “growing sense that the Internet and browsers–rather than a computer’s operating system–will be the future foundation for application development” is just that…a sense. It’s not reality yet.

The other issue, of course, is that every browser now in use speaks 4.01 and older HTML only. Users would need to upgrade to new (and as yet unwritten) versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc. in order to make use of the HTML 5 standard. And the proposed new release involves lots of interesting new bells & whistles. Apparently there are “five main HTML 5 concepts: canvas tags, video tags, geolocation, application caching and database, and Web Workers.” They’re all designed to extend the HTML 4 standard by providing new capabilities, including an easier method of dealing with layout issues (canvas tags).

Mozilla and (I suspect) Microsoft are working on HTML 5 browsers. They’re probably hedging their bets on which portions and variants of the proposed standard will end up being adopted. I suspect we have some time to wait before real “cloud” computing becomes a reality — if it ever does. The dream of a new form of “dumb terminal” computing based on network loading of OS and software has been an I.T. wet dream since the mid 1980s. I’m not sure it’ll ever be as widely adopted as some expect.

For years, Microsoft has taken a lot of heat about its browser. Internet Explorer passed dear old Netscape way back around the turn of the millennium in terms of browser market share, largely because Netscape became a bloated mess and IE was shipping on every copy of Windows. Basically, IE took over the market for several years.

However, there were problems. IE, in true Microsoft style, totally failed to conform to accepted and emerging W3 standards. Redmond insisted on tweaking things (as usual) in order to force developers and users down the path of a Microsoft-only solution. The result: developers who had to create slick Javascript browser testing scripts, then route their users down one code path for IE and another for every other browser on the market.

Many (very bad) sites were created that worked only with IE. Use any other browser, and half the controls wouldn’t work. It was classic, “we’re the big boys and can do what we want” thinking.

A few years ago, that started to change. Firefox started taking market share, and leaped ahead of the pack with lots of new features. Developers and standards groups began demanding that Microsoft comply with accepted practice. Users started becoming annoyed that IE6 (the de facto leader at that time) was clunky and outdated. IE7 improved things somewhat, but was still far behind the curve and never really took off. I know many sites and individuals who simply never upgraded.

Now, however, IE8 is out. With this release, Microsoft is back in the browser game with what seems to be a really good release. It has better security, is faster, is less tightly coupled with Windows, and (hallelujah) conforms much more closely with W3 standards than any previous IE release.

According to one review, “IE8 now passes the Acid 2 test completely, although it still fails Acid 3 miserably. Microsoft is brushing that aside for now though, touting that out of the 7,200 CSS 2.1 tests that are on the w3.org, IE8 passes more of them than any other browser.”

I’m in the process of downloading IE8 now. I know it’ll never replace Firefox as my primary browser, largely because I like Open Source and adore all the handy add-ons available for Firefox. But if IE8 means the end of clunky browser-detection requirements for developers, I’m all for it.